Hidden Summit

Valenzuela,” he said. “She put away a lot of felons.”
    “There you go,” Conner said.
    “One of them escaped conviction and attacked me,” Brie said. “Remember that.”
    “I’ll never forget it,” Conner said. “I’m so sorry that happened. I really am. And I still think my plan is a good one.”
    “Everything changes, of course, if he somehow gets another trial and you are once again the only witness that can hurt him,” Mike said.
    “I guess I’ll have to count on Max to run a tight prosecution and make it stick then, won’t I? I’ll take my chances. I’ll let you break it to Max.”
    “Oh, gee. Thanks.”
    “We just gotta get this over with,” he said. “Really.”
    “Well, how about this compromise—wait till after the trial to visit your sister....”
    He was shaking his head. “Sorry. She’s my only family. Those boys are like my sons. The risk is now, not so much after the trial. I need to see them before something…” He dropped his chin and didn’t say, before someone gets to me to keep me from testifying. “Now. Before the trial. Who’s gonna know anyway?”
    “At least do this for me—fly out of an airport that isn’t real high-profile. A smaller airport—Redding, maybe. Avoid the big airports if possible, especially the ones near Sacramento where associates of Mathis’s might happen to be.”
    “I can do that.”
    Conner emailed Katie. He asked her to email him her address, using their new, secure email handles and accounts. Katie was in Burlington, Vermont. And then he called her.
    “But you can’t come here, Conner! You’ve been told not to do that!”
    “I’m going to slip out of here in a couple of weeks,” he said. “I’ll let you know when to expect me. I’ll spend a few days to a week with you. By then it will be time or almost time for me to go to court. After that it will be over and we can get on with our lives. But, Katie, you and I have things to talk about. Where we’ll get on with our lives, for one thing. There are so many things to think about. The boys being a first priority.”
    With a little catch in her throat, she said, “You are so wonderful. No matter how complicated things get for you, you always put them first.”
    “It isn’t hard to do that, honey. I’ll always do whatever I have to do to make sure they’re in the best possible place.”
    Their conversations were always pretty brief, so after a few minutes on the phone, they said their goodbyes, leaving Conner time to think about the future. Despite the fact that it caused a little ache in his heart to think of his only family living on the other coast, if they were happy there, he’d manage. He might end up spending more on travel expenses than he could afford, but the most important thing was that his sister and the boys have a good life.
    The second most important thing was that he tell Leslie the truth and give her some time to consider the fact that she was lied to. He gave himself permission to wait until the weekend, when there would be time to talk it all out. While she went to her Saturday yoga group, he went to her house, cut the grass and watered her flowers. He bought himself a steak and the sea bass he knew she loved, along with all the other dinner trimmings that would please her.
    When she got home and saw what he’d done, she smiled and said, “Someone wants something....”
    “Understanding, that’s what I want,” he said. “Les, I’ve never lied about my feelings for you—they’re real and they’re real powerful. But a lot of the rest of my personal history is a lie.”
    “Oh, God,” she said. “Oh, Conner…what?”
    “It’s actually Danson Conner,” he said.
    Conner was surprised by the weight it lifted off his shoulders just to be able to tell Leslie the whole story, even though she was shocked. Stunned. Pretty much blown away.
    They were seated at her little kitchen table, facing each other, because this wasn’t a conversation for bed or for the porch, where they might be overheard. When he got to the part about being the only witness in a murder trial, thus the name change and low-profile existence in Virgin River, she let her head drop to the table with a groan.
    “I’m sorry, Les,” he said.
    She lifted her head wearily. “It’s not like you planned it....”
    “When I said I had baggage, it was more than a divorce and those trust issues.”
    “No kidding.”
    “You would probably be smart to cut your losses here and